MinD - Designing for People with Dementia

WP8 Update Year 2

Semi-annual update, March–August 2017

The MinD project has made excellent progress in the first year which is also reflected in progress concerning WP8 – dissemination, sustainability and outreach

The 2nd MinD symposium took place in the Netherlands on July 6th at MinD partner Panton (organized by Panton and University of Twente). The event attracted 20 participants, who were researchers, healthcare professionals and designers. The symposium was divided in two parts; speakers and workshop. The speakers were prof. Kristina Niedderer (introducing the MinD project) and prof. Tischa van der Cammen (Delft University of Technology) talking about autonomous aging.

The second half of the symposium was led by Ingeborg Griffioen (Panton) and involved active participation of the visitors, who worked with the personas and transition areas that have been developed during the project. The event was altogether very successful and has generated interesting new contacts for the project partners. Presentations and results of the symposium have been uploaded on the project website.

In March, partner QUT also organised and hosted a symposium on ‘design for Dementia’ in Brisbane, which was attended by 180 delegates from academia as well as healthcare and design/architecture professionals, and where prof. Kristina Niedderer presented for the MinD project.

Throughout March to September 2017, work on the scientific publications (journal and conference papers) has continued. This has led to a conference publication for the IASDR conference on ‘Designing with and for people with dementia’, and submission to a relevant journal of a theoretical paper reviewing approaches to mindfulness (specifically with relation to dementia) (WP2). Further work has been done on several other papers (three journal papers in WP3, one conference paper in and two journal papers in WP3/4/5 and one journal paper in WP5) that are expected to be submitted in the next half year until spring 2018.

The MinD newsletter is sent out periodically on the MinD public discussion list and the news of the MinD project are also being published through the Alzheimer Europe’s the monthly newsletter. During the secondment in May 2017 in Luxembourg, the MinD team joined the Alzheimer Europe working group for a day-long interactive session that allowed for informing the working group about the MinD project and for expert (lived-experience) feedback on the first ideas.

The project website is being updated regularly with project information and updates related to the exchanges. The amount of followers on Twitter has again increased and the MinD account now has 302 followers.

During the management meeting that took place during the Barcelona secondment in September, the partners discussed opportunities to advance the ideas within the project and to extend the partnership. All partners present showed interest and a next management meeting will pick up on the interest expressed.

The MinD project continues to disseminate its results and to reach out to other researchers, health professionals and the general public.

Publicity

In Oktober 2017, the MinD project was presented at the Dutch Design Week during the DRIVE (organized by the four Technical Universities in the Netherlands) session on ageing. Ingeborg Griffioen and Geke Ludden (University of Twente) presented the MinD project and the results of the first two years. The event attracted 75 participants, who were researchers, healthcare professionals and designers. Notably, one of the other projects that was presented during this event was the Dutch project FIT (http://www.fit-keuzehulp.nl) who have developed a decision making aid that guides people with dementia and their carers to suitable assistive technology at home. Similar to MinD, it is a project that makes a cross-over linking design and healthcare. Lessons learned were shared and future collaborations discussed.

The project website is being updated regularly with project information and updates related to the exchanges. The amount of followers on Twitter has again increased and the MinD account now has 302 followers.

Outreach and participant engagement

The MinD newsletter is sent out periodically on the MinD public discussion list and news of the MinD project is also being published through the Alzheimer Europe’s the monthly newsletter. During the secondment in October 2017 in Nottingham, a very successful PPI session was held that included over 8 people with dementia and carers, whih provided the Mind team with valuable feedback and help with the design decision making process. During the secondment in March 2018 in Nottingham, a second very successful PPI session was held that included over 10 people with dementia and carers and received good feedback about people feeling included in the work. A follow up for this session will be held during the secondment in May 2018 in Nottingham to get further responses from people with dementia and their carers about the Social Engagement Map concept.

Academic Dissemination

Throughout September 2017 to February 2018, work on the scientific publications (journal and conference papers) has continued. A poster (“Design for the “here and now”: New co-creation approaches for innovation in health and care, involving older adults with cognitive impairment”) was presented at the Active and Assisted Living (AAL) Forum 2017 in Coimbra, Portugal. A conference paper about the co-creation process was presented at the International IASDR conference in Cincinnati in November 2017. A conference paper about the co-creation tools (design probes) that were developed for data collection was accepted for oral presentation at the 2018 conference of the Design Research Society (to be held in Limerick, Ireland in June 2018). Work on several other papers has continued (three journal papers in WP3, one conference paper and two journal papers in WP2) that are expected to be submitted in the next half year until autumn 2018. A journal paper on design for care environments for people with dementia (WP5) was submitted in March 2018.

All accepted publications are available form the project’s ‘resources’ pages.

Funding and sustainability

As MinD partners, the University of Twente and design agency Panton have applied for additional funding to disseminate results from the first two years of MinD. This application to Design United was granted (10K). The aim of the proposal was to create a design tool that brings together the insights from the data collection phase to assist other designers in understanding and empathizing with people with dementia. The tool was created in a three days pressure cooker session at Panton and is currently under review by MinD researchers. Upon release, the tool will be available in print as well as online through the MinD website.

A set of 6 MinD partners submitted a proposal to further one of the MinD concepts to the EU Joint Programme – Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND).